A superbly-ridden test by Tim Price has boosted New Zealand’s eventing team into bronze medal position after the dressage phase at the Tokyo Olympics.
Tim and Vitali, riding near the end of the final session, scored an average of 74.39% with the three judges, so their penalty score of 25.6 has them in individual fifth place.
“Today was a little bit of a glimpse of what he’s capable of,” Tim says. “I think once he’s an established advanced horse in the future, he’s going to be pretty special.”
There were a few mistakes in Tim’s test, including on the first centre line.“There were a couple of errors, which were just a little bit due to his age and stage in training, but he’s a real trier and he kept coming back to me,” Tim says. “He just was over-trying and overthinking – we came into trot with a nice uphill transition and I was happy with that, then I put my leg on a little bit and he popped to canter, which is not like him – he knows the distinction in the aids pretty well usually.”
With Jesse Campbell’s mark of 30.1 and Jonelle Price’s 30.7, New Zealand’s total is 86.4. We are six penalties behind Germany, and a further two behind the leading nation, Great Britain, heading into cross-country.
Leading the individual competition, to the surprise of precisely nobody, is the double defending champion, Michael Jung. The German legend has perhaps his fanciest horse yet (in terms of dressage, at least) in Chipmunk FRH, and their test was practically perfect, scoring 78.86% and comfortably in first place with all three judges.
“We had a very good partnership today, and everything worked like I wished it to,” says Michael, who smiled broadly after his final halt, knowing he had set a high mark.
With a penalty score of 21.1, Michael has a margin of 2.5 penalties on Oliver Townend (GBR) and Ballaghmor Class. Seeing that Michael was the only rider at either London or Rio to finish on his dressage score, who would bet against him taking home a history-making third consecutive gold?
Oliver won’t go down without a fight though, and his wonderful horse has an enviable international record.
In third place individually is the elegant Alex Hua Tian, proudly anchoring the first eventing team for China. Alex and his horse Don Geniro were eighth individually in Rio, so are extremely strong medal contenders here.
His team mates showed that they are not just making up the numbers, with two very good tests; Yingfeng Bao scoring 34.4 and Huadong Sun 35.2, ahead of a number of bigger names in world eventing. China is seventh in the teams competition, on a total of 93.60, ahead of the USA, France and Switzerland.
The Japanese riders also performed with class and quality, led by Kazuma Tomoto riding Vinci de la Vigne. Their score of 25.9 puts them in seventh spot individually, backed up by Yoshiaki Oiwa and Toshiyuki Tanaka, who are both in the top 30. Japan sits fourth in the team rankings, just 3.7 penalties behind New Zealand. Sweden is very close behind them in fifth place.
Another rider to truly impress was Fouaad Mirza, of India, riding the sublime and gentlemanly Seigneur. His beautifully-ridden test was rewarded with a penalty score of 28, and they sit in ninth place individually.
The British team had a firm grip on the top of the leaderboard for most of the dressage phase, thanks to two great performances by Oliver Townend (23.6) and Laura Collett (25.8). But their third rider, Tom McEwen – who’d been widely tipped as an individual medal hope – had a couple of minor errors with his horse, Toledo de Kerser. Their score of 28.9, though still good, was only enough for individual 12th place at this stage, and enabled several other teams to close the gap.
Germany is the powerhouse of equestrian sport, and with two former World Champions among their trio, came to Tokyo strong bets for team gold or silver.
Their campaign got off to a great start with Julia Krajewski (who produced Chipmunk to the top level) and her horse Amande de B’Neville, scoring 25.2 for individual fourth place.
But surprisingly, the 2014 World Champion and London Olympic individual bronze medallist, Sandra Auffarth, had an uncharacteristically unruly performance, with her horse Viamant du Matz objecting to his flying changes. They scored 34.1 for individual 37th place.
Australia, usually so strong at Olympic eventing, will be somewhat disappointed with their dressage phase. Andrew Hoy is the best of the trio with his beautiful Vassily de Lassos, in 13th place with a score of 29.6, and so is certainly not to be written off just yet.
But the team is just sixth, 15 penalties behind the leaders, with Shane Rose individually 24th on Virgil (31.7) and Kevin McNab 25th on Don Quidam (32.1).
There is a lot of talk about the course at Sea Forest where the cross-country phase will take place early tomorrow morning.
“It’s very intense”, Oliver says about the track designed by America’s Derek di Grazia. “You’re always on the climb or camber or in the water, or in a combination. The questions are extremely fair, it’s very horse friendly, and if you took each fence individually there wouldn’t be too many problems but at the same time when you add the heat, the terrain, the Olympic pressure and then speed on top of that, it’s going to be causing a lot of trouble and it’s going to be very difficult to get the time.
“Derek is a horseman to start with, and I think he’s a special, talented man at the job. He wants the horses to see where they are going, there’s no tricks out there. Derek doesn’t try to catch horses out, he builds very see-able questions and lets the terrain and the speed do the job for him.”
